Song of My-[diabetic]-Self

I wish you could know how I feel today,
I mean, how I wish you'd approach my diabetes today,
and that it may change in 20 minutes,
along with my blood sugar.

I wish I could describe the tedium,
the minutiae, the neverending carb count,
the guesstimation of medications imprecise in their implementation,
inconsistent in their absorption.

I wish you did not presume my plate was your business -
that I could have a handful of contraband from a candy dish
and joke like others about well-intentioned resolutions gone awry,
rather than endure the heavy weight of your judgmental mealtime gaze.

I wish that there was language to describe
a disease that seems to those around me dormant at best,
but could cancel my season in the span of an afternoon
with an unforgiving missed dosage or an irretrievable forgotten snack.

I wish you could celebrate advances with me,
pumps, electronics, insulins, perspectives,
without thinking that technology makes it go away
or that my investments are because I need a lazy answer.

I wish you knew that I know what it feels like to be normal
as my pendulum swings past you on its daily ride,
watching you suspended so solidly when I know mostly the rocking,
rocking of my body between two extreme precipices.

I wish you had some concept of the goosepimpled, drunken-headed,
hunger quaking, speech slurring, vision blurring,
feet tumbling, knees folding, sweat-beaded,
night waking, intimacy killing, shower slipping lows.

Then by turns, you'd know the soul sucking, rage-a-holic,
organ poisoning, carb vomiting, drowsy headed,
stomach retching, red-faced, ketone crystaled,
sleep inducing, body breaking, coma coming highs.

And in between them and certainly in spite of them,
you'd know peace along a short-lived equator
where you suffer the tourists to look in through your windows
and tsk tsk with "if only she'd try harder."

My broken clock stops short of center tonight, and I wonder what I've successfully shared with you.

Too much, too little? And yet, isn't that my point?

I am the spirit bubble in the carpenter’s level, wiggling toward balance.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean.

But I wish good health to you nevertheless.
Laughter in your lowest times, sobriety in your highs.
To all those burdened, keep encouraged.
We will pass one another on this sweep or the next.